Previous fuel oil injectors have had problems with injecting heavy fuel oil due to its high viscosity and have often required regular servicing to prevent the corrosion and sticking of moving parts within the fuel injectors due to the nature of the heavy fuel oil. Heavy fuel oil has extremely high viscosity levels when cold and must be heated before injecting. This has the disadvantage of reducing the life of any electronic components within the heavy fuel oil injector.
Starting an engine on heavy fuel oil is also a significant problem. Unheated heavy fuel oil inhibits operation of control valves associated with the fuel injector due to the fuel's sticky and/or high viscosity nature.
Another problem with the injection of heavy fuel oil into an internal combustion engine is the chemical interaction of engine lubricating oil with the heavy fuel oil. In time, such interaction enables formation of calcium carbonate deposits on the plunger and barrel components of previous fuel injectors used in heavy fuel oil applications.
In previous heavy fuel oil injectors, a cooling circuit was typically provided around the injector's nozzle tip necessitating larger bores in the engine's cylinder head to insert the nozzle. Such larger bores occupied more space than normal on the utilizing engine's cylinder head and, thus, minimized the area available for engine intake and exhaust valves.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems as set out above.